The Best Mobile App & Design News

Ben Lee

CEO and Co-founder of Neon Roots

Ben Lee is the co-founder and CEO of Neon Roots, a digital development agency with a mission to destroy the development model and rebuild it from the ground up. After a brief correspondence with Fidel Castro at age nine, Ben decided to start doing things his own way, going from busboy to club manager at a world-class nightclub before he turned 18. Since then, Ben has founded or taken a leading role in 5 businesses in everything from software development to food and entertainment.

Nothing excites us more at Neon Roots than big ideas. We’re big idea people ourselves, always have been. It’s what’s helped us become one of the premiere mobile/web development shops in Los Angeles. But everyone has to start somewhere, and we’re proud that our successes have allowed us to reinvest in young, innovative entrepreneurs who find themselves exactly where we once were. The minds behind USKey are definitely those entrepreneurs.

We helped sponsor this summer’s RECESS tour and presented the “Best Idea Not Yet Built” with a FREE Rootstrap session. We basically looked at it as a 20K scholarship to help some rising tech stars that needed a boost to really get their product moving. If we’re passionate about big ideas, we’re just as passionate about sharing our knowledge and resources and plan to continue to volunteer our time to projects we’re passionate about while extending a hand to those bright minds that are going to make a serious impact in the world of tech.

We were incredibly impressed with the women behind USKey and think you will be, too. Check out the video to learn more about their product and how Rootstrap is helping it become a reality.

Transcript:
Ben: “Rootstrap is designed to help entrepreneurs and Product Owners flesh out their big idea, turn it into something that is feasible from an MVP standpoint, which means focusing on building the minimum versus the maximum.”

Delara: “USKey is a really unique way to deter laptop theft.”

Danee: “With theft on the rise, people need a better way to protect their computers.”

Delara: “It’s really easy to plug-in. You can walk away from your laptop and if someone tries to move it, it will sound an alarm and alert everyone that something is going on.”

Ben: “What the Rootstrap process entails is creating a roadmap or blueprint so Product Owners can focus on the important part of building their product. That’s where we come in and that’s where our scholarship really provides value to Product Owners in that we help them take something that conceptually might be possible and actually is possible into practice.”

Danee: “I think the deliverables that they gave us will be invaluable in moving forward. We definitely have everything we need to go out and develop a mobile application and a mobile web site and we’re ready to start fully fleshing out what our concept is going to be, busting out our MVP and then going out to a developer and actually getting this application and this website on the road.”

Ben: “Possibly the most important thing when working on a product is knowing that the passion by the Product Owners is there and exists and that they’re really determined to create something really valuable for the end user. This is something we want to move forward with and provide them with a really clear roadmap so they can go build their product.”